The Song of Fire and the Blue Bird
by Ava Braginski Wang
Summary: What seems like a normal night in Alice's life turns into the event that changes the rest of her life. Pain, pleasure and murder now will engulf the next 14 years of her life.


It was another normal night for officer McGrew. The normal alcoholics were in their cells to sober up from a little too much to drink, thieves and a few assault criminals were being held and the local homeless man had been brought in for sleeping on private property. For the most part a normal night. The part that wasn't so normal was the young woman seated in front of him. From his side of the glass he could see the girl twirling a strand of dark brown hair around her finger while she sung a soothing lullaby. When he first saw the girl brought in, she was wearing a miniskirt and a lowcut blouse. McGrew had assumed she was just another party girl that had had too much to drink and was being brought in for fighting, to sober up or for drunk driving. He never would have expected what the woman in front of him was capable of.

Murder. Twenty-six known counts of murder across the states. Her victims ranged from married to single, old to young, rich to poor. One thing linked them all together; her. The FBI couldn't figure out her motives as she killed women and men alike. While her preference was to kill men, she had killed five women. The dots were hard to connect, and it was even harder to figure out why. All they knew was the testimony of the children. She never killed children and that was how they had been able to get a sketch of what the young woman looked like. The children she left behind, now fatherless or orphaned, always said the same thing. The young woman would sneak into their rooms in the middle of the night, would tell them to pack clothes into their backpacks and follow her. Using the excuse that she was the babysitter or some other trusted adult that the children wouldn't question. Always dressed in blue and always sung to the children as she walked them to the nearest church or a neighbor. The poor children didn't know what was going on.

How could a twenty-eight-year-old woman cause so much harm? What caused her to become what many people called a monster? These were questions that they didn't have the answers to back in 1994 when they had caught her.

Sighing, the seasoned detective entered the room with a file in hand. Upon further inspection her hair wasn't naturally brown at all but rather a light blonde at the roots. Her posture didn't change from the slouch in the investigation chair. Soon she would be handed off to the FBI for further questioning but for now the small town would have to hold onto her and keep her from escaping and continuing her methodical killing.

"You know it's impolite to keep a girl waiting for so long." A crooked smile graced her face. It was enough to give the older man the shivers.

"Do you know anything about a so-called Blue Bird killer?" McGrew looked at her as he sat down across the metal table. It had been bolted to the ground to avoid an incident like that of that morning. The young woman had been resisting the handcuffs and generally freaking out about the manhandling she had been receiving. It got to the point where she had tried to flip the table at his men.

"That's the girl killing all those people, right?" Mischief danced behind her eyes. Her makeup was smeared into a big black circle around them. Combined with the pale color of her skin it gave her the appearance of someone who was already dead.

"Miss just tell us your legal name. We have no records of children who went missing that look like you. No one has called saying you are their child. We can't even compare your fingerprints to those in the system. As far as we know, you don't exist."

"My name?" She looked like she was trying hard to think about the question. "I like the name Alice Song. It has a nice ring to it doesn't it?"

"Look. I want to be the nice cop here but if you are going to keep being a pain in the department's ass then I can't help you. So, I am asking you again. What is your name?" His eyebrows furrowed in frustration at the girl.

She huffed a little at his ultimatum and rolled her eyes. "Fine. Fine. Alice Patience Jackson. Ironic because I was never a very patient little girl."

"And if we run that in our system, we will find a real person?"

"You should. If you don't, you're not looking in the right state."

McGrew stood up and went to the door. He informed his fellow detectives to go run the name she had provided to get a better background of the young woman sitting before them in the interrogation room. He waited for the information before he would start the second phase of interrogation. There was still one more criminal that was on the loose and this twenty-eight-year-old woman was their only clue to finding him. It was annoying to think that the entire FBIs investigation relied on this girl giving up the man she had been traveling with for at least ten years.

"Put her back in the cell until we can find out who she is." McGrew sighed. This would be a long investigation he felt.

"Sir…. We have news from the archive department that they already found her. She used to live a few towns over." His deputy whispered softly to the man.

"Bring her file."

After taking the time to review the woman's file, Detective McGrew entered the interrogation room once again and threw the new file onto the table. "You wanna explain to me how you have been missing for fourteen years Miss Jackson?"

"Oh… You found me." She smiled and opened the file. "I'm surprised auntie actually reported me missing."

He was unamused by the soft giggle that escaped her throat as she looked over the file. How could looking at not only her missing persons file but also the report of her parent's murder be amusing to her?

"What would you like to know Officer McGrew?" A soft twinkle settled in her baby blue eyes.

"Why don't we start at the night you ran away from home?"

"Gladly."


End file.
